


Blue Eyes and the Illusion of Falling

by perfectingsilence



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel Feels, Castiel In Love, Destiel - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, eventually, takes place in season 4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-04-15 04:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4593651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectingsilence/pseuds/perfectingsilence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel meets Dean in Hell, where he drags him out of the fire and pieces him back together by the order of God.<br/>Dean meets Castiel in a dream, where he learns just how right his mom was when she told him angels were watching over him.</p>
<p>(In which the summoning spell doesn't work out as intended and Castiel comes to Dean in a dream instead)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Green

**Author's Note:**

> It was time to finally write this.
> 
> I changed up the description of Hell, as well as the fact that in this story, Dean doesn't spend his last 10 years in Hell torturing souls.
> 
> I've never written for Cas before. I tried my hardest to keep him as in-character as possible; I hope I did alright.
> 
> I based the color of Dean's soul off some past research I did on auras. Someone with a green aura is considered to be connected to heat and nature. They are often healers, teachers, and other types of people who work for good. A forest green aura represents a natural healer, while a turquoise one represents a powerful healer such as a doctor. I figured if the two were mixed together it wouldn't be too far off from the color of his eyes, so I stuck with it.

The heat is unbearable. He had fought countless wars, the perfect soldier, and yet, in the entirety of his life, he’d never felt such evil before, such darkness. 

Tendrils of smoke lick at his being, reaching out to grab at his ankles, his wings. He pushes them away with a flare of his grace.

As he suspected it would, Hell frightens him. By Angels’ standards, Castiel had been just a child when Lucifer rebelled against Heaven. Castiel had not understood why his older brother had been cast out by their Father. When Castiel asked, confused and frightened, Gabriel had explained to him that Lucifer refused to bow down to humanity, to love the humans more than his Father. This settled Castiel’s fears about being cast away as well, because he _did_ love the humans, he loved them very much. It did nothing, however, to cease the fears he still held about Lucifer.

Castiel was all grown up now, so to speak, and it was ridiculous to still be afraid of his brother, but here he was. The memory of the fear he felt as a child, vivid enough to stay with him throughout the millennia, kept the uneasiness within him as he continued his descent into the darkness.

A task that was quickly becoming more and more difficult. He fought through the smoke, the hellfire, demon after demon, his search turning frantic when he could not sense the Righteous Man’s soul. Castiel knew that it was here, but could not find it, as hard as he tried. Knowing he wouldn’t leave without it, he resigned himself to spend the rest of his life here, to die trying to fulfil his mission.

That is when he finally feels it. The soul pulses, gently, calling out to him. Immediately, he knows this is the soul he was sent to save, for he had never seen a soul so bright. 

His soul is green. This man was connected to nature. He was a healer. He worked for good. There was a darkness within him, but so much less than Castiel had come to expect. While some of his soul throbbed a dull, deep black, the rest of it shined a green so bright that Castiel was not sure it was real. He could see billions of different colors — had be alive longer than the Earth this man came from — and yet he knew he had never seen this green before.

As he came closer to the man, the vibrancy of his soul increased dramatically. He was guarded by a group of demons, who Castiel knew he would have to kill. It was nothing he couldn’t handle, and nothing he hadn’t before.

The Righteous Man is strapped to a metal table, most of his bones broken and strips of flesh missing entirely. He opens his eyes, slowly, in response to the silence of the room, Castiel presumes, and-

His eyes are the same green as his soul.

They are slightly dim, hazy with pain, but they are still the same green.

“What the hell are you?” the man manages to grit out between clenched teeth.

Castiel steps across the bodies on the floor, right up to the table. He looks down upon the broken, bloodied man before him.

“My name is Castiel. I am an Angel of the Lord. I am under the orders of God and I am here to save you.”

Castiel uses his grace to heal the man’s wounds as he cuts him free of his bonds.

“Well, I can’t exactly refuse an offer like that, know can I?” 

He laughs. Castiel is speechless. This man had been in Hell for the equivalent of 40 years, and he had just laughed.

“I’m Dean. Thank you, you know, for healing me.”

The man, _Dean,_ sits up, rubs his wrists as he waits for Castiel to speak.

“Of course,” comes the response, slightly confused still at the calmness of the other. “You need to come with me.”

Dean nods, slipping off the table and stretching out his back.

Castiel pauses, senses the arrival of another demon behind him, and turns to see Alastair himself, face twisted with fury at the sight of the Angel. He moves, makes a grab for Dean, but Castiel prepared for this, and does so first. The hand that grabs the Righteous Man’s arm burns, which Castiel was _not_ prepared for, but he doesn’t have time to worry about that. Instead, he unfolds his wings, stretches them out as far as they can go, and with Dean in his grasp, lifts them both off the ground.

Castiel knows that while fighting his way into the depths of hell is the most difficult thing he’d ever done, fighting his way out would be worse. Hell would not let the man go easily, just as Heaven would not allow him to stay there.

They were engaged in a battle, a desperate fight for one man, a single, mortal man who did not realize how valuable he was. Who could not possibly have known that he was the most important man who had ever lived. 

Castiel fought on, and even as hellfire scorched his powerful wings, he kept himself focused, steady. He could not fail this mission. Not after being selected by God himself. Failure would be the end of him, the shattering of his reputation and his much coveted position within Heaven’s ranks. But besides all of that, his failure would mean the end of the Earth itself, the complete destruction of the one thing God wanted His Angels to love more than Himself. The death of the humans would be the only thing he could do that would earn his Father’s hatred. Were the world to cease in such a way, Castiel knew he would not be forgiven. 

Saving the Righteous Man was the most important thing Castiel would ever do.

\----------

Castiel gasped, inhaling the pureness of Heaven as if it would be the last opportunity he’d have to do so. Gingerly, he sets the unconscious human in his arms down beside him. He may have pulled Dean out of Hell, but that was not the end of his mission. It was now his job to rebuild the Righteous Man, atom by atom, to permanently fix the physical damage that had been done to his soul by his years in Hell. Kneeling beside him, Castiel reached out, hand coming up to touch the side of Dean’s face. When his hand made contact, he quickly pulled it back.

He knew in order to fix the Righteous Man, he would have to touch his soul. What Castiel had _not_ known, was that by touching Dean’s soul, he would be able to see, _to feel,_ everything he had. _Everything._ A swirl of emotions hit him, so suddenly, so _unexpectedly,_ that Castiel was amazed he stayed conscious. An entire life’s worth of feelings and memories flashed before him within the few moments his hand had made contact with the soul. He had not known it would be like this. He was the first one to put one of Hell’s souls back together, and now he knew _why._

Because within those few moments, mere seconds, he had felt the types of emotions that were forbidden to Angels. He had never felt such things before, no one had. They were always said to be too dangerous. He understood. He could feel it. _All of it._

He hadn’t understood before, how it was possible there were things he could not feel. He was an Angel, a naive little Angel who followed everything through with perfect precision, who never second guessed an order. Who didn’t know what he wasn’t feeling, because, of course, _he had never felt it._

But now he had.

And now he _understood._

Understood why the emotions within him were banned. They were dangerous. They were messy. They made him question everything he had ever been taught, made him rethink every right and wrong that had been carved into his very being for _millennia._

All at once, Castiel knew what it felt like to have choices.

He knew what it felt like to be alive, truly alive.

_**He knew what it felt like to be human.** _


	2. Summoning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, summoning rituals don't work out quite like you hope they will, as Dean is soon to be very aware.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is being posted a lot earlier than I expected. Can't say I'm complaining.
> 
> A lot of the dialogue is taken straight from Episode 4.01: "Lazarus Rising". I did change up a bit of it, but most of it is the same, just because I didn't see the point in rewriting something that didn't need it.

Dean wipes away the blood on the side of his face with a grimace. The feeling off the sticky substance clinging to the insides of his ears unpleasantly accompanies the pain caused by the loud ringing in them.

“How you doin’, kid?” he barely manages to make out over the noise in his head.

“Aside from the church bells ringing in my head, peachy.” Later, the irony of his statement would not be lost to him.

The conversation he has with Sam is full of lies, Dean is sure. He raised the kid, he can sure as hell tell when he’s lying, even if it’s over the phone. But he doesn’t mention it, because who is he to chew out his brother for lying when he is doing the exact same thing. Worse, even, because Sam isn’t lying about something that could very well end up getting him killed. Suspicion laces Sam’s voice after Dean tells him he and Bobby will just be getting some beers, but he doesn’t say anything about it, and Dean thanks the stars above for his brief period of luck.

Again, the irony of it all would be found eventually.

Bobby isn’t happy about the plan to summon whatever it is that’s pulled Dean from the pit, but Dean’s made it clear he’s not backing down, so reluctantly he agrees. The choice is plain and simple. Dean would much rather force this thing into revealing itself than wait for the answers they all know they need.

\----------

Dean stands in front of the metal table, almost similar to the one he vividly remembers being strapped to, and lays out every piece of equipment they could possibly need. He organizes them for easy access as he admires Bobby’s handiwork. The entire barn — which more closely resembles a large metal shed in Dean’s opinion — is covered in white symbols. He scans the walls, spray paint depicting pretty much every symbol he’s ever seen, and even many he hasn’t.

“That’s a hell of an art project you’ve got going there,” he says as he admires the linework, clean even as it reaches up to the ceiling, a place that is not easy to spray paint, as he knows well. If he hadn’t trusted Bobby with everything, his life included, Dean would have been worried at the accuracy of the unfamiliar ones. But Bobby knew what he was doing, knew more than Dean did, he was sure, and that set him at ease.

“Traps and talismans from every faith on the globe. How you doin?”

“Stakes, iron, silver, salt, knife.” Dean motioned to each object briefly as he listed them off. “I mean, we’re pretty much set to catch and kill anything I’ve ever heard of.”  


“This is still a bad idea.”

And Dean agrees, he really does, but that doesn’t matter. The idea of what they’re about to do gives him a very bad feeling, but he has to ignore his own mind yelling at him to call the whole thing off. He knows nothing about the one who pulled him out, save for the fact that whatever it is, it must be extremely powerful. As far as he knows Sam is the only one desperate enough to risk such consequences to bring him back, so why the hell was he standing here? What else could possibly want him alive to badly?

“Yeah, Bobby, I heard you the first ten times,” he remarks sarcastically, gathering the courage he needs. “What do you say we get on with it and summon this sonofabitch?”

\----------

Nothing was happening. Bobby finished the ritual, complete with Latin incantation and all, and then they waited. Of course, they had been expecting, and been prepared for, an intense battle with whatever showed up. The truth, however, was that nothing _had_ shown up. There was no sign the spell had even worked.

“You sure you did the ritual right?” Dean asks the question as he twists his knife around in circles in an act of boredom. 40 years in Hell, and he couldn’t even get something interesting to do to make up for it? He’d been looking for a fight, looking for answers, not a night of waiting around in the cold for nothing to happen.

The glare Bobby shot his way told Dean that, yes, in fact, he had done the ritual correctly. Which he knew, but he still felt the need to ask. Dean was a control freak, he’d admit it. He felt he had a right to be, considering the fact that if he hadn’t been, there’s no way Sammy woulda turned out even remotely alright. When you raise your brother the way Dean had, you learn to become a control freak about the actions of the people around you.

Dean was in the middle of pondering all of this — looking back at his childhood in attempt to justify his less than desirable habits — when, like the sound of lightning piercing through an otherwise clear day, something smacks into the metal roof of the barn. The two hunters jump up, shot-guns in hand, ready for the battle that is apparently finally coming. All at once, the barn begins to shake, the sound of metal smacking metal echoing throughout the open space.

While the rattling grows more intense, it never amounts to anything, just dies down, slowly, until once again, the barn is still.

“What the hell was that?” Dean is angry. Angry at the fact that the two of them are sitting mice, being teased by some form of ‘higher being’. Before long and he would know just how much irony loved him.

“I haven’t the slightest damn idea,” comes Bobby’s response.

“Do the ritual again,” Dean suggests, because they have to do something. They’ve come too close to meeting this thing to turn back now.

“Dean, if it didn’t work the first time, then why-”

“Just try it.” There was something in his own voice that even he couldn’t recognize, and it must have been enough to convince Bobby.

“Alright.”

And so the ritual was repeated, this time with much more immediate results. Much like before, the entire shed began to shake, rattles intensifying until pieces of the metal began to detach themselves. A high pitched tone, the same one that now seemed to follow Dean around everywhere he went, filled the space. As it climbed the scale in pitch, the two hunters tried to cover their ears, shield them from the pain the sound was causing while still holding onto their guns. Above them, the light bulbs shattered, one by one, raining down an explosion of broken glass. Sparks fell upon them in dangerous sprays of electricity and heat.

The pitch of the tone continued to rise, and the two hunters abandoned their shotguns in favor of properly shielding their ears from the awful sound. Not long after, they were falling to their knees in discomfort. Dean had experienced more types of pain than he could count, many of them in Hell, but none were quite like this. Blood was trickling from his ears again, and he prayed that if he lived through this, his hearing wouldn’t be permanently damaged. Really though, he prayed he _would_ live through this, because the noise was now louder and more painful than it had ever been, and Dean _really_ didn’t want to go back to Hell.

Looking over, to make sure Bobby is still conscious, brings a lot of confusion. While Bobby doesn’t look great — his ears are also bleeding and his grimace is one of extreme pain — he doesn’t look nearly as bad as Dean feels. And when Bobby meets his eyes, from where he’s managed to get up onto his knees, Dean knows that something, besides everything else, is wrong. Because Bobby looks worried as hell, and he’s no longer covering his ears with his hands, which Dean assumes means he no longer needs to, no longer hears the horrible tone that for Dean is only getting worse.

Bobby rushes over and kneels down next to Dean, who stays in his position: curled up on the floor, hands over his ears, eyes squeezing shut in pain before he forces them open again. He can’t hear him, but sees a phone pressed to Bobby’s ear, eyes wide in worry and mouth forming quick words. If he had to take a guess, he’d wager Sam was on the other end of the call.

That’s the last coherent thought he has before the tone gets just slightly higher, high enough for Dean to hope for something to end the agony, even if that something happens to be death. He’s pretty sure he screams, raw and sudden, but he can’t hear himself, or anything else, to be sure. The last thing he’s expecting is for the mechanical screaming to morph into actual, _human_ screaming. A voice, high pitched, but mercifully less so, is shrieking in pain. For a moment, he wonders if the voice belongs to himself.

“Please,” he can barely make out the words, but he knows they aren’t said in any voice he recognizes.

By this point, he forces his eyes open again, barely, to see who it is that’s screaming. The sudden rush of moonlight into his vision makes him dizzy. He sees no one else besides Bobby. Yet, the screaming continues.

“Please, _please stop.”_

The desperate plea is the last thing he hears before unconsciousness overtakes him.


	3. The Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last thing he remembers is the ritual, the shaking of the shed, electricity spraying down on him, shrieking filling his ears like the human embodiment of pure sorrow itself.  
> The sound is no longer ringing through him, but the memory lingers, sends chills down his spine. It takes him a moment to realize there are no common noises to replace the one he ponders on. Either the area he’s in is silent, or he can no longer hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news is that I actually have the next chapter entirely written, so I just have to edit it, which means the wait will be a short one. Sorry this chapter took so long; it was honestly a bitch to write and I had to keep rewriting it because it felt way too forced. It's not the most exciting chapter, to be honest, but it was a necessary filler. I'll make it up to you guys next chapter, I promise.

Dean opens his eyes, slowly, and then becomes frantic; only manages to stay quiet because of the hunter’s instincts pounded into his being. He doesn’t know where he is, nor does he know how he got there, and that has him panicking. Usually he would not be so upset, and he can’t place why he is today, but he feels as though something is off. The last thing he remembers is the ritual, the shaking of the shed, electricity spraying down on him, shrieking filling his ears like the human embodiment of pure sorrow itself. 

The sound is no longer ringing through him, but the memory lingers, sends chills down his spine. It takes him a moment to realize there are no common noises to replace the one he ponders on. Either the area he’s in is silent, or he can no longer hear. The possibility of the later sends another fresh jolt of panic through him, sudden and hot. 

Sitting up in bed with a new sense of urgency-

He’s in a bed. A very comfortable bed, compared to the motel mattresses he’s grown accustomed to. The realization calms him significantly, as he is no longer particularly worried about having been kidnapped by something malevolent. His eyes scan the room, and with the initial confusion no longer clouding his mind so heavily, it takes him less than seconds to recognize the room in Bobby’s house that’s been his for as long as he can remember.

Just when he is about to throw his legs over the side of the bed to get up and investigate, the door opens and his brother walks into the room, a smile breaking out across his face as he sees that Dean is awake. Dean, while pleased to see his brother, is more focused on the fact that the door squeaked as it opened (as result of an old house cared for by a man who didn’t pay much mind to such things), and the fact that he knows this means that he must be able to _hear_ it. He watches Sam as he makes his way over to the bed, Dean sagging back against the bedpost in relief a little more with every dull footstep on wood floor.

“Hiya, Sammy,” he smiles back at his brother, tone surprisingly light.

“Thank god,” is Sam’s reply, breathy with a sigh of what Dean assumes is also relief. “Bobby and I have been worried about your hearing.”

“So was I, when I woke up. It’s quiet enough in here to really worry a person.”

Sam laughs. “Bobby’s been out in the junk-yard, talking to some old contacts for any info, and I’ve been doing research all day, so no one’s really been causing much noise around here lately.”

And speak of the Devil, because it’s as if he’d heard himself being mentioned when Bobby announces, “I thought I heard voices back here,” and enters the room.

“Hey, Bobby.” In the midst of his confusion, Dean hadn’t been worried about much else besides where he was, but upon hearing the voice of his father-figure, his worry for Bobby is both realized and resolved.

“Good to see you awake.”

“Yeah, you too, Bobby.”

He’s about to ask what the _hell_ happened, when Sam interjects from his spot sitting in the chair at the side of Dean’s bed (a place where Dean is sure his little brother’s spent a good amount of his time recently).

“How ya feelin’, Dean?” His voice is concern laced with hope, a gentle flowing of words that is surprisingly gentle on the headache slowly developing behind the green eyes that look over at him. _For the first time in god knows how long,_ Dean thinks, because he can take a guess at how long he’s been unconscious, and based off the way he feels and the look of dread that still ghosts across their faces, he’d say he’s been out long enough for some serious damage to still be a possibility.

“Just peachy,” comes his reply, though it is exhaustion rather than snark that drives his words home, so he doesn’t get the classic bitch face from Sam, and therefore, doesn’t feel like a douchebag.

“Dean-”

“I know, Sammy... Honestly? I feel pretty bad, but it’s more of a headache than anything to really freak over.”

Sam grabs a bottle from the nightstand and twists the cap off, palming out four pills and handing them to Dean. And _sure_ , he could have done that himself, but he doesn’t complain about being taken care of, because he knows that if their roles were reversed, Sam’s complaints wouldn’t make a difference to him.

“Thanks,” he says before quickly downing the pills, washing them down with the glass of water that’s also been set out for him. "So what happened, anyway?"

"What do you remember?" Sam asks, his voice now filled with more unease.

All at once, Dean realizes that they don't have any clue either. After all, he was the only one who heard the voices, and the only one who was so deeply affected. They're looking to him for the answers, and for some reason, the idea of giving them makes his stomach twist gently in protest. Something about the way the voice plead with him leads him to believe that whatever pulled him out of Hell is a lot different than they thought. Of course he still wants to find the thing, but gank it? He isn't so sure now, and he feels the need to make sure nothing bad happens to the thing on his account. So he lies.

"Not much. The same tone as before and then lights out." It's not a _lie_ , per se, he's just omitting certain parts from his account.

"Nothing else?" Bobby asks him, obviously disappointed, but looking as though that's the kind of response he expected.

“No.”

“Why are you lying, Dean?” Sam’s voice isn’t accusing, like one would expect it to be, but rather he seems genuinely confused.

“What are you talking about, Sammy?” He blames his nervousness on the unknown of what awaits, but whether or not that’s really what’s got him so jumpy, Dean can’t be sure.

“You honestly think after all these years I can’t tell when you’re lying? You’re the one who taught me, for god's sake.”

And okay, that was a fair point, and one Dean hadn’t actually thought of. He’s busted. With a curt sigh, he begins to explain.

“Alright, fine. You already know that Bobby and I tried to summon whatever it is that yanked me outta the pit?” A nod from Sam and he continues, “Well, obviously things didn’t work out right, and the spell never actually summoned anything. But the entire place freaked out, and I wasn’t lying about the tone from before. Except this time, it was a lot worse than it’s ever been in the past. This is where I start getting a little fuzzy. Bobby?”

The man in question begins his account where Dean’s had left off. “The pitch got pretty high, but after a while, it stopped. Left my ears ringing like faulty speakers, but nothing other than that. I haven’t the slightest clue what happened on your end, but not too long after that, you passed out cold. Thought we were gonna lose you for a minute there, or at the very least your hearing.” Bobby goes quiet again, his portion of the story finished for now. Dean takes this as his signal to fill in the gaps.

“The tone never stopped for me. The pitch just climbed higher and higher and I’m not even really sure how I could still hear it at the end. And then…” he trails off, unsure of how to say what he needs, but by no means wants, to say.

“Then what?” The gentle nudge from Sam is enough to get him talking.

“Then the tone turned into screaming. Human screaming.”

“But that’s not possible. There was no one else there, and even if there had been-”

“Trust me, Sammy, I know, but that’s what happened. I couldn’t hear anything but the screaming, which kept the same pitch as the tone. Still, right before I passed out… I heard a voice.”

“A voice? Talking?”

“Yea, English and all. It… it was begging me. Begging me to stop the ritual, I think.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” he replies with more snark than necessary, because the voice still rings on somewhere in the depths of his subconscious and at this point he couldn’t forget it if he _tried_.

“Well this changes things,” Bobby mutters from his spot next to Sam. _You don’t know the half of it,_ Dean’s mind provides in response. “The real question here is, what is this thing, and why can only you hear it?”

“Wish I knew.” 

And he does, he _really_ does, because the more he thinks about this thing, the more he wants to know the truth behind it. Why would something so powerful waste its time on him? Pulling a soul out of Hell can’t be an easy feat, and the fact that whatever it is went through that much trouble to save him makes Dean feel almost… indebted. It’s as if he owes this being something in return for his life, which he does, really. So, he sets his jaw in place, and in the matter of a few seconds decides that he is going to find out what saved him, and he is going to make it up to them. He’s going to save it’s life in return for saving his. If all else fails, and it has to die, he’ll make sure that at the very least it’ll die with respect, and to ensure that, he’ll kill it himself.


	4. Black Holes and Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He takes the pills with bourbon, even though the label says not to, and ignores his brother's teary expression from across the room. The idea of being alone with his thoughts all night makes him sick, so he stays up on the couch watching TV until dawn; watches the window out of the corner of his eyes as the sun slowly rises. The world is dark for hours, and the knowledge that the sun gets more sleep than he does is bitter on his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "My life, you electrify my life. Let's conspire to ignite all the souls that would die just to feel alive."

When Dean falls asleep at night, he dreams of Hell. Such occurrences are common protocol for him now. He isn’t okay and he knows it, everyone does. Memories of torture overwhelm him when he looks at his own reflection. Scars should cover him, from both Hell and his time before that, but aside from the brand on his arm, his skin is untouched. It's wrong, on a level deep enough he feels as though he's living in someone else's skin.

The look in his eyes are cold on the good days, afraid on the bad, and it terrifies him. He imagines the only reason Sam isn’t weary of him is that he doesn’t know the truth. What kind of person would he be if he told his little brother the actual horror stories? As far as Sam's been told, Dean doesn't remember most of the torture, which is a lie as simple as they come.

He does a lot of that now: lying. Lies about being okay, about not wanting to talk about it, about getting enough sleep. The list grows longer with each passing day, but Dean can’t bring himself to get worked up over it. If his method of coping involves bottling up and not involving his brother in his own damn problems, well than that’s his business. It’s just how it is, how it’s always been.

He avoids every mirror he comes across.

Everyone is worried about him, he knows it, and it makes him feel guilty in a way he probably shouldn’t. After all, it’s not his fault he’s so different now, and he really is trying as hard as he can to hide the brunt of the damage. That doesn’t change the fact that every time he catches Sam’s eyes, sees the way they shimmer with pain for him, Dean wants to crawl back in that pine box he barely fought his way out of. He can feel the pain radiating off the two of them when they watch him, as much as they think he’s oblivious to it. He knows just how difficult he’s making things for them. But there’s nothing he can do, so it continues.

He doesn’t eat so much anymore.

Things are different now. There are no more 8-hour rides in the Impala with his brother at his side. He doesn’t blast the same five albums over and over, singing along at the top of his lungs until he goes dizzy from the force of it. A greasy diner burger hasn’t been placed in front of him in a week now. The last one he ate was bad going down, worse coming up, and he hasn’t so much as looked at one since. 

Alcohol is a different story. That’s something he can still down like his life depends on it, which, at this point, maybe it might. The amount he drinks now is yet another cause of worry for the two looking after him, but he can’t bring himself to stop. It’s the only thing that lets him sleep at night.

Even _with_ the help, he isn’t sleeping. Some nights he can never get himself drunk enough to find such state of unconsciousness. Other nights, he’ll average an hour or two, before the nightmares wake him. Being awake is bad, but being asleep is worse.

The dreams of Hell were enough to urge him to fight sleep, but now he finds that the fire is not the only thing that plagues him. Because now his dreams also feature the same screams that have haunted him since his return to Earth. There are no words now, no pleas, nothing human about it. And still, the sound makes him shiver, even in his sleep. He wakes up trembling so hard once he wonders if it’s possible to work himself into a heart attack.

It doesn’t take long before he’s gotten himself so worked up he can’t sleep. No amount of whiskey helps, the desperate attempts from Sam do nothing, not even the over the counter sleeping pills he bought lull him to sleep. 

He takes the pills with bourbon, even though the label says not to, and ignores his brother's teary expression from across the room. The idea of being alone with his thoughts all night makes him sick, so he stays up on the couch watching TV until dawn; watches the window out of the corner of his eyes as the sun slowly rises. The world is dark for hours, and the knowledge that the sun gets more sleep than he does is bitter on his tongue.

Nightmares about Hell make sense; he would be more worried if his memories _didn’t_ haunt his subconscious. What surprises him, rather, is the screaming, and how much it bothers him. On the rare occasion he does sleep, he wakes in a cold-sweat, shaky and out of it, even more so than usual. Hell haunting him is something he’s growing accustom to, slowly. The thoughts are with him more often than not, and he’s learning to process them. But the screaming? How is he supposed to handle that, when he still can’t figure out what it even _is_? It sets him on edge in a way Hell does not. 

Even with how worried Sam is, Dean is sure he doesn’t know how bad it truly is yet. He hasn’t been told about the nature of his dreams. Surely he assumes they are about Hell, nothing more. Still, he asks now and then, weary each time, if Dean wants to talk. Though he gets the same answer without fail, he still asks, and as much as it gets on Dean’s nerves, he can’t be mad at the kid. If their roles were reversed, he knows he’d be doing the same thing.

Which is why he also can’t be mad when Sam starts hiding the majority of his alcohol. Or when he starts forcing Dean to follow the instructions on his pill bottles. Or when he sits up with him at night on the couch for hours, until his eyes are drooping shut and he finally forces himself to go to bed. One night Sam doesn’t force himself to leave, and instead falls asleep on the couch next to Dean, somehow taking up so little room despite his large build. And on the couch, with the steady breathing of another beside him, Dean manages four hours of sleep before the nightmares wake him. Even then, it’s the most well-rested he’s felt in days.

Still, even with everything Sam is doing to help, he worries too much. Bobby does too, though he is much less obvious about it, and not nearly as vocal with his opinions on Dean’s health. He can still see it, clear as day, in Bobby’s eyes. The worry that he is going to lose one of his boys, _again_ , for the third time now. Dean knows he can’t be the cause of that, and he _really_ doesn’t want to die. He just doesn’t know what he is supposed to do anymore. So, he lies when he has to, and says nothing at all when he knows the lies won’t hold. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s all he has.

How many times does he have to tell them he’s okay before they believe him?

How many times before he believes it himself?


	5. Irony, if an Unfortunate Life Can be Labeled as Such

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe Sam won’t follow in his footsteps, for once in the kid’s goddamn life. Like everything else, it doesn’t matter. In his last moments, everything that should, no longer does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been a while. Truth be told, this chapter gave me a pretty hard time. Third rewrite now, and I think I've finally got her where I want her.

His first fucking case since Hell, and he was about to be thrown right back into the pit.

It wasn’t exactly what he’d signed up for. But when it really came down to it, he couldn’t call what he was doing now living, so there wasn’t too much for him to lose. Except for Sam.

Sam, who from his spot downstairs hunting for the bones to burn, had most definitely heard the echoing thud of him being tossed through a wall. Likely making his way up the stairs three at a time now, to come to his brothers aid. As always.

Not that Dean wouldn’t do the same damn thing, as though he hadn’t been the only one there for his brother since the two of them were yanked out of their lives by a fire that still haunts them. None of that matters, not now. Not the childhood Dean lost for the sake of Sam’s, not the nights cheating his way to enough money for dinner, not the countless injuries sustained protecting his little brother from the things that go bump in the night. And especially not the 40 years of Hell he put himself through because he couldn’t stand to be in a world without the stars.

It doesn’t matter. Because as soon as Sam finishes his ascent up the stairs, rushes into the room with the full intent to shoot this spirit full of rock salt, the fact that he will be just late enough is going to set in. And Dean is sure that if the piece of wood jutting through his side, his liver, if he had to guess, doesn’t end him, then the look on Sam’s face will. After all, the image of his brother, limp and fading in his arms, is still engraved into Dean’s brain just as painfully as a large portion of what Alastair did to him while he was strapped to that table. Now won’t be any different. Except this time, Dean won’t be the one driving home with his dead brother’s body in the backseat.

He knows what that did to him. Didn’t take him long to crack and sell himself an eternity in Hell, although he has always been the weak-willed one. Maybe Sam won’t follow in his footsteps, for once in the kid’s goddamn life. Like everything else, it doesn’t matter. In his last moments, everything that should, no longer does. It’s what shouldn’t, fireworks, mac and cheese, the childhood idolizing of heroism, that does. The little things are those which consume him.

Looking down at himself, sprawled across a heap of splintered wood and insulation, Dean half notices the parallel between this and being ripped to shreds by hellhounds. Broken wood, a lot of blood. He thinks, in his haze, that it must be his liver, which really is a bitch. He knows, from a 16 year old Sammy excitedly reciting textbooks to him, that the liver is one of those organs that holds a lot of blood at any given time. Not to mention it’s job of ridding toxins means that those very poisons are going wherever the fuck they feel like right now.

Point was, by the time Sam got to him, Dean knew he would be dead.

He hears, faintly, someone yelling his name. Sam, he presumes, though with the way he’s starting to fade out of consciousness, it’s hard to be sure. If it mattered, he would yell back, let himself be found sooner. But like everything else, it does not, and so he finds himself content with letting the moment spin on without him. Eventually, he’ll be found, and until then, he focuses on the black dots swarming his vision, tries to count them, compares them to Fourth-of-July fireworks.

He’s angry. Furious that he has to go through this again; that he has to put Sam through this again. Bitter with the world that seems so intent on letting them both end up in Hell. But he knows that this is inevitable, and so he focuses on the spots.

Dying is easier the second time around.

This time, everything is quiet. Which is why, when the air itself starts screaming, it’s just unnerving enough to pull him out of the haze of death.

Nearly as quickly as it started, the screaming disappears, replaced by light. At first, it’s far too bright, painful in a way similar to looking directly at the sun. Slowly, the light dulls down, focuses from a piercing white to a softened blue. He would think the light to be an angel, if not for him knowing that angels aren’t real. Surely, the orb solidifies into something more temporal. He should be trying to figure out what it is, but really, keeping the black spots to the edge of his vision is taking up all of his energy. 

The orb moves towards him, taking on the form of a figure, still lacking detail in blurry blue light. He should be alarmed — but he finds something about the figure familiar — and is not. Focusing now on the figure, but unable to place its familiarity, Dean loses track of the spots, which still swirl his vision with alarming intensity. He loses the world entirely, for a moment, and when he gains it back, the figure is kneeling in front of him, reaching out to him.

Instead of coiling back, Dean simply watches, blinking his eyes into focus to watch the blue before him move. A hand rests on his shoulder, and he jumps, the wood that impales him tearing with the force. A painful moan escapes him as the pool of blood wells up with more vigor. The hand is cold, sharp with the sting of electricity. The other hand settles on his jaw, softer, but still prickling with energy.

He isn’t sure what happens then, other than the feeling of electric cold which now spreads throughout his body. This captures his attention so suddenly he finds himself surrendering entirely to the sensation. Electric pulses feel quite like what he’d imagine fireworks would. He has one final, fleeting thought of gunpowder induced color before the black spots take over his vision completely.


End file.
